Last week I had the computer Dr. clean out my hard drive and reinstall XP. I have a Dimension 4500 with 512 mem. and the original graphics card ect. Prior to the clean out I could fly any plane and get smooth preformance with a frame rate of about 18-20. After Reinstalling FS9 now I get great frame rates but a lousy jerky motion when I look out the window. Also should I call up the GPS or Radio or anything else like that the frame rate goes down from 19.5 to 5. Like I said, all was running great before the clean out  but now I can hardly fly the default aircraft let alone my payware or other planes. What do you think the computer DR. forgot to do or put in?     (I did try and install Direct  X9 but it still shows up as DirectX 8) I'm no computer wiz so help with this would save my flying carrer.  Wildie. ???

Thanks James, I'm not running any programs and I do not have all the updates. I did check at Microsoft and the auto search said there was'nt anything I needed. I think I have the second patch from Microsoft but not the first. Please list all updates for me if you can. As for the Driver updates I don't know what I would need or where to get them. Could you list those as well. Thanks so much for your help... Wildie.

Just check which company makes your graphics card..then we maybe able to help 8)

James

Thanks guys, You know I just noticed that half of my memory is already used up. I have 512 installed and nothing really big except FS. I have a very clean hard drive, or should, So i'm thinking maybe only half my memory is being accessed. If so, what would I do to fix that? Also I have 22 updates and Service Pk 2., But not Service pac. 1. Do I need both? I will spend the day updating what I can and wait for the Computer Doc. to show back up. (he said he'd be over 3 days ago..). But anyway the Memory access could be it do you think? Wildie.

BTW, just for future reference.

SP2 has everything in SP1. So if you have a clean instal of windows, a direct update to SP2 is recommended.